Now 77, Ivan Moravec has been flying under the classical-music radar for nearly 50 years. A student of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, he made his London debut in 1959 and his American debut with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1964. Starting in 1962, E. Alan Silver’s hip but obscure Connoisseur Society label began releasing recordings. A four-disc Chopin set became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; the complete Chopin Nocturnes drew a rave review from Harris Goldsmith in High Fidelity; Village Voice jazz critic Nat Hentoff wrote the liner notes for a 1967 Debussy disc, citing Moravec’s command, on previous releases, of “the inner imperatives of Beethoven and Chopin.”

A major, and major-label, career seemed in prospect. Forty years later, however, Moravec remains “the elegant, elusive Czech pianist,” as Michael Church calls him in an interview at Andante.com. His repertoire is limited: a good deal of Chopin and Debussy, some Mozart and Beethoven, less Haydn and Schumann and Grieg and Franck and Ravel. He appears infrequently in the world’s great concert halls. Along with the Connoisseur Society, his recordings (some 30 in all) have been released by Supraphon, Vox, Vai, Hänssler, Dorian, and Harmonia Mundi — hardly the who’s who of record labels. Apart from the eight months he spent in England in 1968, he’s lived quietly in Prague with his wife, Zuzana. He never joined the Communist Party, and that must have inhibited his touring. He hasn’t performed in Boston since his 1994 Celebrity Series recital in Jordan Hall, but last Saturday he made his seventh appearance for the PianoForte series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just a short hop from Princeton University, where he’s the 2007–2008 Belknap Visitor in the Humanities. He’d be a perfect subject for the New Yorker (not least because of the piano tool kit he carries around with him); maybe Alex Ross will get round to him one of these days.

The hair is a little whiter, but it’s the same chubby, cheerful face (he looks a bit like veteran character actor J. Pat O’Malley) and stocky body, same shy smile, same little-boy walk, bent slightly forward, arms hanging straight down, as if his parents were about to present him to an important visitor. There was, as always, minimal fussing with the piano bench: within five seconds of sitting down, he’d launched himself into Haydn’s Sonata in D Hob. XVI:37. His trademarks — what have made him a cult figure (he doesn’t have a Web site, but his fans do: www.ivanmoravec.net) — are his heroic tone, the big structural arcs he creates, his dance pulse (no thumping on the beat), and phrasing that’s more like breathing. Sitting at the piano, he might remind you of Walter Gieseking. (He’s described Gieseking’s recordings of Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Brahms’s Intermezzi as his “first great experience”; they were mine also.) He’s very still, and his hands move along the keyboard like the spirit of God upon the face of the waters. He says that his tone comes from the weight in his arms, but when you watch him play, it seems to be coming from his very core.

The roar of the crowd I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new Tosca was widely reported.

Stormy weather The BSO has been having terrible luck hanging on to its star soloists.

Beloved of God Johannes Chrisostomas Wolfgang Gottlieb (Amadé) Mozart was born 250 years ago last Friday, January 27.

New to Boston Last year, Jeffrey Rink’s Chorus pro Musica gave us seductive belly wriggling; this year: “screams, rape, moans, blood, pillage” and the desire to “feast on limbs and severed heads.”

Double trouble Boston Lyric Opera's debut Opera Annex production was so good in so many ways, it's painful that one bad idea just about sank it.

From Knoxville to Swan Lake and back As our most prestigious classical-music institution, the Boston Symphony Orchestra ought to be every year’s headliner, and once again, under the adventuresome direction of James Levine, it is.

Open spaces In my review of the memorable Brahms performances Sir Simon Rattle led with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the Celebrity Series of Boston last month, I should have mentioned that one decision responsible for the beauty and spaciousness of the orchestral sound was the placement of the first and second violin sections on opposite sides of the stage.

From deli to concert hall If you're a young (or youngish) music fan looking to become a little bit more engaged with classical music, there is truly no better time than right now, particularly if you'll find yourself in Portland this weekend.

Variety show James Levine completed his second season as the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director with another riveting though not-quite polished evening of Schoenberg and Beethoven.

Almost The Boston Lyric Opera comes maddeningly close to having a good Carmen . (The production continues at the Shubert Theatre through November 17.) Keith Lockhart leads a superb orchestra and chorus and a cast of plausible singers/actors in a compelling if not spine-tingling performance.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013 A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013 Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012 Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.